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I read a bit about circle packing a while back and this reminded me of how hexagonal packing is the most efficient way of packing equal circles. Maybe it has something to do with that? I still haven't looked up the actual answer, BTW, if I get bored I might take another look at this tomorrow.

Edit: Also, to tile something like regular octagons, for example, on a plane would require extra squares in some spaces, as opposed to using hexagons, triangles or squares (I can't think of any others right now). Out of the three, hexagons seem like they would provide the most rigid structure since the way squares line up doesn't look like it would be quite as rigid, and tiling triangles would form hexagons out of the triangles anyway.

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Also to consider I'm pretty sure that I have observed that bunches of soap bubbles form hexagons as well. Memories are fuzzy so I could be wrong. So when packing a bunch of spheres that are attracted to form a solid shape it seems that hexagons are ideal. I guess that you would want to balance the max internal area that can be formed without losing space between the shapes.